A colouring protocol for the generalized Russian cards problem

In the generalized Russian cards problem, Alice, Bob and Cath draw a, b and c cards, respectively, from a deck of size a+ b+ c. Alice and Bob must then communicate their entire hand to each other, without Cath learning the owner of a single card she does not hold. Unlike many traditional problems in cryptography, however, they are not allowed to codify or hide the messages they exchange from Cath. The problem is then to find methods through which they can achieve this. We propose a general four-step solution based on finite vector spaces, and call it the “colouring protocol”, as it involves colourings of lines. Our main results show that the colouring protocol provides a solution to the generalized Russian cards problem in cases where a is a power of a prime, c = O(a2) and b = O(c2). This improves substantially on the collection of parameters for which solutions are known. In particular, it is the first solution which allows the eavesdropper to have more cards than one of the communicating players. ∗Emails and affiliations: {acordon,hvd,dfduque,fsoler}@us.es, University of Sevilla, Spain. Hans van Ditmarsch is also affiliated to IMSc, Chennai, India, as a research associate. 1 ar X iv :1 20 7. 52 16 v4 [ cs .I T ] 2 6 M ar 2 01 4